同主题写作Argument65 by mandy61217

mandy61217UID: 2549053

TOPIC: ARGUMENT65 -The following appeared in a memo from the president of a chain of cheese storeslocated throughout the United States.
"For many yearsall the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic andimported cheeses. Last year, however, the five best-selling cheeses at ournewest store were all domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin. Furthermore, arecent survey by Cheeses of the World magazine indicates an increasingpreference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers. Since our company canreduce expenses by limiting inventory, the best way to improve profits in allof our stores is to discontinue stocking many of our varieties of importedcheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses."

The suggestion of to discontinue stocking many of imported cheese andconcentrate mainly on domestic cheeses at first glance seems reasonable basedupon the evidence of best-selling cheeses data in a new store, the surveyconducted by Cheeses of the World magazine, and the possible reducing expensesby limiting inventory. Close scrutiny of each of these facts, however, revealsthat none of them is credible support to the suggestion.

In the first place, the major suspicion stems from the doubt whether the fivedomestic cheddar cheeses as the top-selling means as the main profits sourcefor that new store. Firstly, the five-selling kinds of cheeses was domesticcheddar cheeses does not necessarily mean that the sale volume of domesticcheese was greater than the imported ones. Since there might be many many kindsof imported cheeses, though each one only had a small sale volume, the totalsale volume of imported cheeses would larger than the total sun of domestic oneswhich are likely with far less variety. Moreover, the best-selling might bebecause of some promotions specific for those domestic cheddar cheeses whichcut down the price in a certain period last year and won a good sale amount. Ifso, obviously, the best-selling record would mean nothing about good earningsbut only the “the best-selling” when we consider about the cost and the price. Lastly,customer’s taste may shift quicker more than we can imagine. There is no fixedlink from last year’s sale data to the coming years’. In short, in order to drawa suggestion by the five top-selling data, the author should carefully considermore about what it exactly means.  




In the second place, even if the company could earn a lot from thosetop-selling domestic cheeses and might be successful to cut down some of theimported ones in that newest store in Wisconsin, it might be failed to adopt byother stores located throughout the whole country. One reason is that, UnitedStates, such a huge country with broad area, the food culture or taste ofpeople from one region to another might change a lot. The other reason is thatgood experience happened in a new store could be useless for the “old” ones,because the stories running years and years may have lots of loyal customers;of course including the imported cheeses buyers. Therefore, before widespreading of cutting down the business of imported cheeses, more informationregarding to the difference and the similarity between Wisconsin and otherregions, between newest store and the “old” ones need to be gleaned.





What’s more, the arguer fails to usethe data from the survey by Cheeses of the World magazine. The most severemistake is that the author confused with the concepts of “cheese consumer” and“cheeses magazine subscriber”. Obviously, these two concepts can not be equal.Furthermore, the arguer fails to convince that the survey sample of this studyis suffice to represent cases in general – in term of their preference fordomestic cheeses among the United States. All in all, the survey data fromCheeses of the World magazine just indicates the preference of their world-widesubscribes but no direct relationship with American cheeses consumers’.


Last but not least important, exceptthe expense of inventory, the author fails to take into account other relevantfactors that might affect the profits, such as cost, rate of return oninvestment, profit margin and so on. The imported cheeses do increase the inventory fee,but it might have large sale volume or good profit margin. Only primarily onbusiness of domestic cheeses may lost lots of benefit comes from importedcheese or even worse, it may result in losing the competitive strength amongother competitors, and push the company onto a highly risk edge, since it wouldbe a complete reverse decision toward the megatrend. As we all know, almost allthe business all over the world are always trying to expand the variety ofproducts and enlarge the consumer groups to earn more and save themselves inany difficult periods.


As it stands, the argument is not wellreasoned. To make it more logically acceptable, the author would have to collectmore data about other regions besides Wisconsin and carefully analysis and use the surveyresult from Chesses of World magazine. Additionally, more factors which wouldaffect profit need to consider instead of to judge simplybased on the reducing inventory fee.

谢谢拍砖！